


A Desperate Gamble

by DarkyLonewolf



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: Attempt at Humor, F/F, Gen, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Romance, Summer Vacation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-12 18:37:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19950970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkyLonewolf/pseuds/DarkyLonewolf
Summary: It's finally the end of Spring, and most students of Luna Nova are either staying back at the academy, or going back home for the summer.One student in particular has a change of mind the moment she sees an opportunity to spend more time with a close friend of hers, whom she may or may not have a crush on... And may or may not confess her hidden feelings to.





	1. Prologue - A Ride to Remember

It was the middle of May. For many a Luna Nova student, their first academic year was finally over, with them having passed the finals for the year and finally able to breathe out in relief.   
  
That being said, that year there was much more struggles for certain students than just the usual worries for their academic career – one student in particular was practically sent on a quest to restore magic to the entire world, and a certain new teacher nearly caused a worldwide magical apocalypse, with seven rather unusual students of Luna Nova barely managing to prevent it at the last moment, whereas the unlikely teacher herself resigned from her position willingly, so as to avoid any further conflict.   
  
Either way, this was all left behind, and now Akko was busy looking forward to her summer vacation. She just couldn't wait to go back to Japan and show her parents what she's learned – given the fact that magic once again became commonplace after the restoration of Yggdrasill, all she would really need is to get permission to pack up a wand and a training broom with herself.   
  
But even that wasn't her main problem right now. Her folks sent her two tickets on just about every transport she would need on the way over to Japan – from the train going from Blytonbury to London, to the plane tickets right to Japan, to another train to Kyoto…  
  
The brunette wasn't even remotely worried about the upcoming trip, as it was more common of her to worry about the more trivial things. Case in point, the fact that she got sent **two** tickets on everything. Whom exactly could she ask to tag along with her?  
  
Out of her eight close acquaintances, she narrowed the list down to about three possible candidates. Hannah and Barbara would never ever tag along with Akko, even if the brunette was on much friendlier terms with them nowadays, and they had their own plans anyway. Constanze was staying back at Luna Nova, as going away from her mechanisms for the entire summer was not really something she felt like doing. Jasminka was heading on back to Russia, to her relatives. And finally, Lotte was once again going back to her folks, hoping that this time there wouldn't be any poisoned pies that would turn her family into moss all over again.   
  
Thus, the only candidates left were Diana, Amanda and Sucy. Even then, Akko had certain doubts about that last one, as Sucy was way too aloof to even bother tagging along with anyone – heck, for all she knew, the mauve-haired witch even mentioned that she would be perfectly content to just stay back at the academy and continue her studies in alchemy, so Akko was still unsure whether asking Sucy to tag along with her would be an appropriate option.   
  
So that left only Diana and Amanda. Naturally, given Akko's recent new friendship with the blonde, she almost immediately went to Diana and explained the situation to her…   
  
Only to get rejected immediately afterwards, even if there was a fair share of reluctance on Diana's part.  
  
"Akko, I know how much this would mean to you, and that we became quite the close friends over the past few months, but I'm afraid I cannot go with you. I have quite the fair share of family matters to take care of. Even if I'm not yet a legitimate heir to House Cavendish, I still have my own responsibilities to take care of." – After the blonde finished her speech, she sighed out and, looking into Akko's puppy-dog red eyes, remarked: "Don't worry about it, Atsuko. I'm fairly certain that, after you return from the summer vacation, we could spend time together still. Maybe even go on a da-"  
  
The blonde immediately yelped and covered her mouth up, correcting herself afterwards: "I mean, we could continue your magic training. Either way… I apologize for not being able to go with you."  
  
"Eh, it's no biggie, Diana. I mean, you were basically buried under a crapton of Cavendish responsibilities since your early childhood, so I guess that's not changing anytime soon." – The brunette remarked in a resigned tone, then added: "I guess I'll go ask Amanda then."  
  
"I… Wouldn't do that, if I were you. Amanda got herself into trouble again, and has quite a bit of academy work to catch up on, too, so she's staying for summer school." – Diana explained, leading Akko to groan in frustration again.   
  
Guess she really did have to turn to the only option left after all.

* * *

"So, you're going back to Japan. And your folks got you two tickets on…Just about everything. How is this **my** problem again?"  
  
Back in the now-cleaned up Red Team dormitory, Akko had just finished explaining the situation regarding the tickets to Sucy, with the mauve-haired witch not being all that enthusiastic on the matter. As Akko held up the other ticket right in front of Sucy's face, the alchemist had a brief flashback – after all, this was almost exactly the way Akko was showing off the Shiny Chariot card she had to her, right in Sucy's face and without the tiniest hint of enthusiasm from the Filipina's side.   
  
"Now wait a moment, I thought your first option for such a situation would be to let Diana tag along with you?" – Sucy asked dryly, not even bothering trying to hide her sheer distaste for the blonde, the reason for which she couldn't yet explain even to herself.   
  
"She's got some urgent family matters to take care of. Everyone else is too busy, and Amanda has to stay back here due to some… Difficulties."  
  
Somewhere further away from the Red Team room, a red-headed Irish-American groaned in frustration.   
  
"…So you mean I'm the **last** person you would want to tag along for the entire summer with." – Sucy uttered with the same dry tone.   
  
"It's not about that!" – Akko shouted out defensively, wildly waving her hands, the extra ticket she held nearly flying out of her right hand. – "It's just… I thought… It sure wouldn't be nearly as fun for you to just stay back at the Academy for the entire darn summer?"  
  
After a bit of awkward silence, the brunette stuffed the ticket back into her pocket and added: "Anyway, Suce, please decide quickly. I've got the train coming up this evening and I can't afford to be late."  
  
And with that said, Akko went to exit the room, leaving Sucy alone with her thoughts on the matter.   
  
Sighing, the mauve-haired girl looked over her portable alchemy set.   
  
Despite herself, and despite wanting to just stay back at Luna Nova and continue her research into the toxin she was left on the doorstep of an orphanage with, she went on to begin packing her things up into the odd briefcase she swiped off from somewhere once.   
  
As she continued haphazardly packing everything up, both her personal items and the things she stole from somewhere, including a book on forbidden alchemical ingredients taken right out of Luna Nova's library, some odd feeling continued gnawing away at her. The same feeling she had when she first met Akko. The same feeling she tried to squash down.   
  
The same feeling she knew all too well, and have grown to fear ever since her childhood.

* * *

A few hours later, Akko sat at the train station, having arrived early with everything she's packed up and now waiting for the train.   
  
Huh. In her attempts to not be late, she certainly went too far in the other extreme. The most she really had problems with was getting the permission to take some of the practice equipment with her, so that she would continue her magic training through the summer, and even then the only reason that one took so long were the tons upon tons of unnecessary papers to sign in three copies or more.   
  
As for Sucy, she had it much more difficult – even if she did pack everything up, there were still a lot of formalities to take care of, not to mention that she had to go through even more formalities regarding the items she could take with her legally - mainly certain alchemical ingredients - , as well as sign several forms on how any and all responsibility for Sucy's misconduct beyond the gates of Luna Nova is purely her responsibility.   
  
Still, the more rational part of her continued pulling her back. Screaming at her to take the documents back, to tell the teachers she decided against going anywhere, to go back to the Red Team dorm, unpack everything and get back to a quiet, boring summer, filled with nothing but alchemy experiments… Without any dedicated guinea pig to test her potions out on, too.   
  
On the way through the all-too-familiar bridge, Sucy stopped dead in her tracks and turned around, with the rational part of her seemingly having wrestled control of her back to itself. However, as she looked around, it was there that Sucy remembered her time with Akko. True, the girls may have spent a good half of the year either away from one another, with Akko on her quest to restore magic to the world and Sucy being busy with her attempts to decode the formula of the bottle of toxin she was left with, yet still, there were just as much great moments between them as there were the more humorous ones.   
  
The alchemist blushed as she remembered how they first met, their occasional moments together, the near-kiss between them – turns out that the odd dream she had about herself being some sort of princess trapped in a tower was a shared experience between her and Akko – and how, when Akko was gone, she almost immediately went to search for her at that one bridge, hoping that their reunion would be just between the two of them… And finally, the odd sense of pride she felt when Akko was finally able to fly a broom all by herself.   
  
It was then that Sucy teared up, gripped her briefcase tighter, and ran right back to her original destination, hoping to arrive to the train station in time to go with Akko.

* * *

Akko sighed as she looked around, ready to board the train. She couldn't believe that she really did have to go back home alone this summer. Sure, the brunette looked forward to spending the summer with her folks yet again, but at the same time, not having any of her friends tag along with her made her feel… Empty, somehow.   
  
Just as she boarded the train and it was about to move…  
  
"Wait up!"  
  
Akko turned around in disbelief.  
  
This was one of the first times that she heard Sucy sound so panicked.   
  
The mauve-haired Filipina ran through the crowd at the station as fast as she could, dragging a heavy briefcase in her hand along the floor and hoping that maybe, just maybe, she would get onto the train in time.   
  
"Sucy! You're here!"   
  
Mere moments before the train was about to start up, Sucy spun around and threw her briefcase right into the open door…  
  
Only for it to practically nail Akko to the door of the train compartment she was heading into.   
  
As the brunette lifted the heavy item off of herself, she noticed Sucy practically jump into the train, just as the doors closed behind her, catching a piece of the alchemist's skirt.   
  
Standing up and trying to catch her breath, Akko looked over at the mauve-haired girl, who, having lost a piece of her skirt in an uneven fight against the train door, was now back to being her usual quiet and deadpan self, leaning onto a nearby wall with her arms crossed and looking somewhere further away.   
  
"Sucy! You could have broken all my ribs with that darn briefcase! At least try to be more careful!" – The brunette reprimanded her friend, checking if he ribcage was intact.   
  
"Well, I didn't break any, so no problem here." – Sucy remarked smugly, cackling in her typical manner afterwards.   
  
**Well, this was certainly going to be a long summer…**


	2. Chapter I - Lullaby of Lilies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first part of the trip goes by relatively normally up until the night falls, and Sucy has a rather odd dream... A dream that may or may not reflect her subconscious desires...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, is that the cheesiest chapter title I thought of or what?

For the most part, the train trip was going by in an awkward silence, the only sound being the train noises and the occasional passenger chatter about the trip proper, their casual life, or vacation plans. Sucy and Akko hardly talked to each other, and this kind of silence was getting downright unbearable for the ever-so-noisy Akko. Now, one thing was the "required" silence, like in libraries, but this was just pure, undistilled awkwardness.   
  
As for Sucy, even though her surroundings may have been quiet, the thoughts she had certainly kept her preoccupied. For one, she still couldn't believe she actually tagged along with Akko, and still couldn't find a rational explanation for doing so. Second, Akko was very likely going to pry into her thoughts if she were given any reason to, and keeping up her usual façade of smugness and lack of care for anything was beginning to get yet more difficult for Sucy as the train ride kept going.   
  
Third…  
  
Sucy's trail of thought was cut off by Akko getting a tad too close to her for comfort and asking: "Suce, you've been quiet for the entire train ride. Normally I wouldn't get worried about that kind of stuff, but you seem more… Sad rather than just quiet. Are you sure everything's alright?"  
  
"I just still can't believe you managed to talk me into tagging along with you." – The mauve-haired witch lied, looking off to the side and trying to hide her blush from Akko. Even then, the alchemist's eyes constantly darted over the brunette's face, given just how up close and personal they were at the time.   
  
Huh. For all of Akko's density, her eyes were certainly a lot brighter than she herself was. That glint of constant excitement and curiosity always seemed to stir something up within Sucy… And those chocolate brown locks of hair looked so silken soft, making Sucy wonder how nice they would feel between her fingers… And those lips… Come to think of it, they looked surprisingly inviting…   
  
Ugh… There that feeling was. The one feeling she tried to kill off, what, seven times already since she first met Akko?   
  
After that one shared dream, she just let that particular emotion live on, provided it wouldn't disturb her too much. And with Sucy being separated from Akko for long enough, it worked at first… Until the feeling began gnawing away at her all over again, even worse so whenever Sucy saw Akko together with Diana.   
  
True, she already had an intense dislike for the blonde, given her overall loathing of aristocrats and "pure" witches in general, but somehow, it was the fact that Akko was spending so much time with Diana that seemed to anger her the worst.   
  
"Hey, you okay there? Spacing out randomly is kind of my thing, you know." – Akko joked, waving her palm in front of Sucy's face.   
  
The other witch groaned and remarked: "I just got lost in thought is all. Of course, you wouldn't know what it's like, even if you are the type to get lost in broad daylight."  
Not even sarcastically retorting to Akko like this made Sucy feel any better, even though deadpan sarcasm usually worked well enough as a defensive mechanism for her. In fact, she wanted to slap herself in the face for saying that, and, as a result, indirectly pushing the Japanese witch even further away from herself.  
  
As for Akko, she just gave out her usual "Hey! What is that supposed to mean?!" response, which didn't do anything for Sucy's mood.   
  
Thus, the rest of the train ride went by quietly, except maybe one particular incident.   
  
As problematic as it was for Sucy to be left one-on-one with Akko, the only company they had for the remainder of the trip being two random drunks they had to share the compartment with was not any better.   
  
So there the duo was, in the middle of the night, trying to fall asleep on their respective upper bunks, with the lower ones… Well… Occupied, for a lack of better word.   
  
"Well, here's another one for this train trip!"   
  
Sucy groaned in frustration – having to take the upper bunks because of them sharing the train compartment with two random drunks already sucked enough, given Sucy's extreme dislike for sleeping so close to the "ceiling", but hearing the constant clanking of beer bottles coupled with drunken slurring sucked even worse. Not helping matters was Akko's rather… Distressed reaction, as she whined "When will these two be done with their beer already?!" from under the pillow she was covering her ears with, lying face-down on the bunk bed.   
  
Figuring that getting those two drunktards out of the room for at least **some** time is a must, Sucy reached for her wand and did a quick silent spell… Resulting in a bunch of live snakes, similar to the same ones she threw at Akko back then, on the bridge, dropping right onto the table and hissing at their two unlikely neighbors, making them scream and run for their dear life right out of the room.   
  
"You know, Suce, you can be a little too cruel." – Akko remarked as she got the pillow off her head, whilst that the train was just stopping near some random midway station.   
  
"I'd say they **fully** deserve it." – Sucy cackled, watching the two drunks get led out of the train.   
  
"And besides, seeing you so distressed makes me feel even worse." – The alchemist added in her thoughts, falling right back down and deciding to finally get some much-needed shut-eye, with Akko doing the same.

* * *

An endless field of lilies.   
  
A large tree blossoming in the middle of it all.   
  
Somehow, even if that particular location felt incredibly unfamiliar to Sucy, as if it certainly wasn't a part of her dreamscape, she still felt… At ease. Like that flowery plain was the calmest place in the world, dream or otherwise.   
  
Neither did Sucy question the fact that Akko was lying right next to her, leaning onto her shoulder and seemingly having fallen asleep next to her.   
  
The alchemist lightly shook the brunette up, leading to Akko yawning and opening her eyes.   
  
Somehow, up close, Akko's vibrant red eyes seemed even more beautiful.   
  
Like two flawless rubies… Or no, wait, would it be like two bright stars?   
  
Despite herself, Sucy began reaching forward, and there didn't seem to be any hesitation on Akko's part, either, as she was fully prepared for the inevitable kiss…  
  
Only for the Filipina to notice something in the corner of her eye and stop for a moment.   
  
A familiar short-statured figure in a black coat, holding a boquet of lilies, was standing far away, just barely in Sucy's sight, and overlooking the scene with a faint smile.   
  
"Wise choice." – the emotional being whispered, and it was there that Sucy felt like she was being abruptly pulled somewhere else, and-

* * *

There it was again. The same sudden awakening Sucy's had whenever she had any dreams involving Akko.   
  
Sitting upright as much as she could, Sucy noticed that it was already morning by now, and the train was due to arrive to their current destination soon, probably in an hour or so.   
  
Somehow, without any real intent to do so, Sucy looked around for Akko, and felt an odd sense of relief when she found the brunette on the opposite upper bunk, still sound asleep and snoring loudly.  
  
Sighing, the mauve-haired witch decided she might as well start packing her things back up early. She had a rather long flight coming up ahead anyway, and from there – yet another train ride that promised to be just as long as this one.   
  
Yet somehow…   
  
**The fact that she would spend all this time with Akko made her feel somewhat happy.**


End file.
